NetBSD/sparc64

About NetBSD/sparc64

NetBSD/sparc64 is a NetBSD port to Sun's 64-bit UltraSPARC machines.
The first binary release for sparc64 was NetBSD 1.5. NetBSD/sparc64
supports many systems, including Sbus-based UltraSPARC systems and
PCI-based UltraSPARC systems using UltraSPARC I, II, IIi, and IIe
CPU types.

NetBSD/sparc64 supports both 32-bit and 64-bit kernels.
A 32-bit kernel runs all NetBSD/sparc binaries.
A 64-bit kernel runs 64-bit binaries, and has support for running most
32-bit binaries as well, with the exception of some low level kernel
groveling tools. Additionally, NetBSD/sparc64 is able to run Solaris
64 and 32 bit binaries with emulation. See compat_netbsd32(8),
compat_solaris(8) and the pkgsrc package
emulators/netbsd32_compat16.

Martin Husemann and Andrey Petrov are the maintainers for NetBSD/sparc64.

For frequently asked questions and links to Sun hardware information,
see the NetBSD/sparc64 FAQ.

The stability problems caused by the SMP changes (see below)
have been solved. SMP is still not working, unfortunately.

2006-10-07:
SMP progress - but not success yet

Matthew Green and Martin Husemann have started to merge quite old changes
originally written by Andrey Petrov into current. Matthew Green also
added ddb support for SMP kernels on sparc64. Unfortunately SMP
kernels do not work yet, and it seems that some of the changes
had side effects even for uniprocessor kernels. One example of this
is probably
PR 34741.
This means that -current is not as stable as you might expect for
sparc64, but that there is progress on SMP. Stay tuned.

Atheros wlan devices require a binary-only HAL, linked into the kernel
with the driver proper. After David Young imported a new HAL, a version
for NetBSD/sparc64 is now available, tested, and known to work.

2006-01-30:
New bootloader required

Dennis Chernoivanov recently reworked the bootloader/kernel
protocol. This means that you need to install a new bootloader
before updating a kernel. Instructions can be found
here. The new bootloader will, of course, boot older kernels
as well.